NAICU President David Warren Statement on White House Summit on College Opportunity

WASHINGTON, DC (January 16, 2014) – President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama today convened a national summit on enhancing college opportunity for low income students. More than 140 leaders from public and private colleges and universities, corporations, foundations, non-profit groups attended the event and made organizational commitments to launch or expand new programs designed to meet the President’s goal of increasing college opportunities for disadvantaged students.

NAICU President David Warren attended with summit along with more than 60 presidents from private, nonprofit colleges and universities. Following the event, he said:

“Today the President and First Lady focused the nation’s attention on the need to increase opportunities to attend and complete college for students from low income families. This is an important economic competitiveness issue for the nation and a transformative issue for these students and their families.”

“America’s private, nonprofit colleges and universities have a legacy of providing access to higher education for students from all economic backgrounds. In recent years, many campuses have stepped up their efforts to reach out to disadvantaged students seeking to achieve their dreams of a college education. Many of these efforts are part of NAICU’s Building Blocks to 2020 initiative.”

"Helping all students select the college that best fits their intellectual, professional, and extracurricular interests; values and personality; and financial circumstances is crucial to academic success. NAICU’s U-CAN initiative features the key information on hundreds of private colleges that students and families say is important to choosing the right college.”

“We are proud of the more than 60 institutions which today announced new access and completion initiatives. We are equally proud of the work done on a daily basis by the hundreds of private colleges working to help every student achieve their educational goals.”

“NAICU and the nation’s private colleges and universities remain committed to working together to serve the educational needs of students and the human resource needs of the nation. This is a national imperative.”